This week we hope to bring you garlic, potatoes OR green beans, eggplant, cucumbers, sweet peppers, cherry tomatoes OR red tomatoes OR 5 pounds red tomato seconds, and arugula. Large share members will also be getting beets, zucchini OR tromboncino squash, and spicy salad mix. Fruit share members will be getting peaches and (we think, we hope!) pears.

Let me just start by telling you how strange it was to write “September 3rd” in the heading of this week’s newsletter. It seems as if the entire farm season so far has been a rehearsal for the month of August…and now it’s over!? August and September are generally the busiest and most productive months on the farm. Wyatt says that when people think of “The Harvest,” now is the time of year they are imagining. As Mo explains in her posts this week, every year some crops grow and produce beautifully and others just sort of poke along. Despite this, I have to say that we have been growing an incredible amount of food on the farm and for the most part things are looking great.

A lot of people have been asking how many weeks are left in the CSA season. This is week 16 out of 22, meaning that after this week, there will be 6 weeks remaining. The last week of the CSA season is the week of October 14th. And speaking of October 14th, be sure to mark your calendars for our end-of-season CSA party which will take place that Sunday! More details to come.

For now, I want to remind you all that our second farm tour of the season is coming up THIS SUNDAY, September 9th. This time the tour will take place at the Teller Farm on Valmont Road. Take a look at last week’s newsletter for directions. We will have hay rides (super fun for the kids) and walking tours of the farm. There are no goats, llamas or alpacas at the Teller Farm, but you may get a chance to meet Eva’s pigs! Be sure to bring a hat and sunscreen and dress for the weather. We will have a couple of tents set up but otherwise there is not a whole lot of shade on the farm.

I hope to see everyone there!

Fruit Share Update

Posted by Maddie

I’ll start with the sad news. This week will be the 12th week for the fruit share this season, meaning it will be the final “regular season” week for members to receive fruit. The great news is this: western slope farmers are continuing to have an incredible fruit season and we will be re-opening the fruit share for 6 more weeks!

The fall fruit share will start next week and will primarily include apples and pears. You can log in to your account to sign up for the fall fruit share.

Happy September and I’ll see everyone at pick-up!

-Maddie

Tomato Seconds

Posted by Mo

Every year some crops do really well and some struggle or fail completely. That is just the nature of farming. This year our tomatoes started out like gangbusters. A few weeks ago we started to see some signs of disease and alas: we, like most of the farms on the Front Range have been hit with either a tomato blight or virus. We have some nice tomatoes, but most of the plants have some sort of problem. They are producing some tomatoes, but not lots of perfect ones we usually have. The ‘not perfect’ tomatoes we pick for ‘seconds’.
The good news is the seconds tomatoes taste fine. You can eat them raw, cook with them or freeze them.

You have a choice this week of 5 pounds of tomato seconds. I thought I would show you how I make one of my favorite tomato sauces.

Roasted Tomato Sauce

Posted by Mo

Here are 5 pounds of tomato seconds.

I think I’ll use the garlic and pepper from this week’s share in my sauce. You can do that too or just use tomatoes. I added an onion from last week’s share in my sauce too.

Core and roughly cut everything up and put it on a baking sheet that will hold it all. You might use 2 9X13 baking pans.

Now pour olive oil and balsamic vinegar over the whole thing.

And mix it all up with salt and pepper and any herbs you have in your garden and put that in the a 350°F oven to roast for a half an hour or so.

It should look something like this when it is done roasting. There is a lot of liquid so be careful removing it from you oven.

Roasting caramelizes sugars and condenses flavors, you can almost see that here.

I dump everything into a bowl and fish out the woody and too charred herbs and throw them away. Then I hit the roasted tomato mixture with an immersion blender.

I got just over two quarts of sauce out of my 5 pounds of ‘seconds’ tomatoes.
When life gives you seconds, make something second to none.